Blue mist covering my plan

[Keith_K]

Can anyone tell me what I have accidentally pressed to get the effect shown on the attachment when I click within a room and how to correct it? It is only happening with floor 1. Floor 2 behaves properly and places the "mist" properly within the room I click.

Thank you.

[David J. Potter]

That is caused by one or more faulty wall connections. You can do one of two things:

1. methodically check all wall connections, one at a time by zooming in on each one and properly connecting them until you find "THE" one that is causing the problem.

or

2. click on the area or object that you want to select, which then "selects" the entire plan, then depress the "NEXT" button which will then select the next possible selection ,you can also use the "Tab Key" on your keyboard, it is the same command whether you click on "next" or depress the "Tab" key, until you then select what you first intended to select.

If you do not want to fix the problem due to time or interest as in 1 above then 2 is an option if you are in a hurry.

I have learned to carefully make sure of my wall connections as I draw due to this phenomena. It is annoying enough that I just avoid making poor wall connections. It just is what it is and you try to just do what works and repair things that get missed.

DJP

[jcaffee]

Or, use Plan Check (under the Tools menu) to find your bad wall connection. Just a thought.

jon

[Keith_K]

Thank you for your replies.

I did fiddle with some walls before the phenomenon started yesterday I had to do a wall break to make two walls collect without bleeding into each other) so I'll have a look at that. I guess I asked for trouble by using an uncommon wall type with 220mm of insulation sandwiched between the exterior stone and the brick interior walls. I imagine that using just grey and black as wall colours also confuses matters but somehow using a third colour for, perhaps, the room defining walls just seems wrong.

Coincidentally I had a look at the plan check thing this afternoon and there are supposedly 76 problems. When I started reading them they all seemed to be about TV connections, light switches, electrical points etc. I'm not even ready to think about those yet! I haven't even started on my roofs.

[David J. Potter]

I'm not even ready to think about those yet!

The software is just a bunch of pre programmed routines and settings, it does not "think" or "suppose" or "judge" anything, it just does what it is programmed to do and nothing more.
The largest part of learning the software is observing what it does and then taking steps to guide it to your desired results.

DJP

[Keith_K]

But what if it won't give the desired result despite the steps you take after observing and learning? I have tried all sorts of things such as changing the texture and colour of certain walls but still they bleed right into the adjoining wall which has a totally different spec and no matter how hard I try I am unable to drag the end back to where it is supposed to join.

[David J. Potter]

But what if it won't give the desired result despite the steps you take after observing and learning?

The telling evidence is that you have not yet "learned" for if you had, you would not get unwanted results. Guessing what settings do and are for, using tools without knowing how can cause so many collateral problems that Einstein could not then unravel them.

I am not intending to be mean or harsh, but the fact is that properly understood and used this software is a marvelous tool to bring ones creative dreams to greater reality and misused it is just another mysterious nightmare.
It is your choice to make, study-practice-success or guessing (New users often call this a lack of intuitiveness, it is just another way to say I couldn't figure it out by guessing and no study-practice), trial & error followed by unwanted results.

Sincerely, if you are not getting the desired results then you do not yet understand the tools you are using. Understanding and desired results go hand in hand.

So if the results are not there, then that is evidence that the requisite understanding is not yet there; the remedy is more study followed by practice of what was just studied so when you can demonstrate to yourself that you are competent, then you also know that your study was successful.

The software doesn't give or do anything, it is merely a tool, a means to a result. Only your understanding can be sufficient difference to guide that tool to any worthwhile results.

DJP

[Keith_K]

The telling evidence is that you have not yet "learned" for if you had, you would not get unwanted results. Guessing what settings do and are for, using tools without knowing how can cause so many collateral problems that Einstein could not then unravel them. DJP

Sorry, David, and I too do not mean to be rude but you do so love pontificating to others. We all know that you've been using this software for 20 years as you mention it often but then, whoa, along comes someone like me who is using it for the first time in his life at the age of 67 and who has to learn how to do so. And I'd rather learn by doing a project that means something to me than by fiddling with one little room in order to undertake my learning curve.

And what better way TO learn than to use the software and the tools that come with it? No doubt you went through much the same when you first started using it all those years ago and made errors along the way.

When all is said and done and given that you too seem to have (or have had) a similar problem to that which I am experiencing - and I'm sure we aren't the first nor will we be the last - you'd think someone who is responsible for the technical side of things for the software might take note and take action to fix the obvious bug and to make it possible for walls with different specs not to cause a problem when they butt together.

Insofar as the other suggestion made regarding the "check plan" facility: I ran through all 78 "problems". 60 of them referred to things that I am not yet ready to do as mentioned previously and the others referred to the interior wall layout on my first floor not matching the walls underneath them on the ground floor. Given that there is a 200mm reinforced concrete floor between them that is as I intended them to be.

No mention is made of any other problems with the main structural walls so the blue mist remains.

[Katalyst777]

take action to fix the obvious bug

I think what David is trying to say this isn't a bug.

It is not understanding Wall Type Definitions or the purpose and what the "Main Layer" controls and settings associated with it in this dialog, and how that relates to wall's appearance with joining together in the floor plan view.

the blue mist remains

If the "blue mist" as you keep calling it (the highlighting that indicates the exterior room is selected because of a bad wall connection so the entire plan is selected) is still there, it means a bad wall connection is still present.

Usually you can tell visually on the screen where the walls don't look right.

Your screenshot doesn't show the entire plan, so its hard for us to guess where the bad connection is, so your best option will be to start at one corner of the plan, drag the walls back, try to select a room again.

If the whole thing still highlights, you haven't found the bad connection yet, so keep going around the building until you do.

You might even want to do this in a copy of your plan, then once you find the bad connection, return to the original drawing and just fix that connection.

Hope this helps.

[Keith_K]

I mentioned the wall type thingy in my other thread where I have highlighted a couple of bad connections as examples and it seems that this is the catalyst (no pun intended) for all the ills that plague me and my plan.

I just wish I could remember exactly what I did to what wall that made the mist (I love the term - it suits) obscure everything so that I could unso it as everything was just fine before that. I'd like too to post a screenshot of the whole plan but I only have a 24" monitor so the zoomed in size to fit would probably be far too small for you to be able to actually see anything tangible.

I might try your suggestion about making a copy and fiddling with that. I'll just have to have a drink or two first so that I will be able to cope with my other problem of slowness and jerkiness.

[Keith_K]

If the whole thing still highlights, you haven't found the bad connection yet, so keep going around the building until you do.

And that, Kat, is the sort of advice that people like me look for when coming here. I zoomed in as far as practicable and, jerk by jerk, started going around the walls and then I found it, managed to fix it and the blue mist has now evaporated. Thank you.